Recent Comments

About

Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

The word unprecedented shows up over 30,000 times on Google News. The word Obama? Almost 29,000 times. Merkel gives 23,000 results, Azerbaijan 4,000+, Iran a mere 13,000. There's nothing wrong with frequent use, but the word unprecedented seems to be a favourite expression to use at the moment.

The meaning of the word unprecedented is very easy: without precedent, meaning that there is no previous example to compare to whatever it is you are emphasizing. The Apollo program to take humanity to the moon for the first time: unprecedented. Atomic bomb: unprecedented. Let's take a look at the top few results from Google News to see if what is being called unprecedented is actually unprecedented.

Missouri river could rise to unprecedented levels -- this one is correct! If the river rises to a level never before recorded, it's unprecedented. The scope (a large river affecting thousands to millions) also matches the selection of such a word.

So is unprecedented actually being used more now or is this just imagination? Google Trends supports the former assertion. See what happens when it is compared to another term with similar traffic like Armenia:

The news reference volume at the bottom is where we really see it, as the word unprecedented suddenly begins to take off as a buzzword in 2008, maintaining this level.

Interestingly (and a search just now has reminded me of this), there is clear blame to be laid for this. It goes all the way to the top, and began right around the presidential election too. Keep an eye on the word's usage over the next decade (a second term would mean lots of Barack Obama coverage until at least late 2016) to see if its unprecedented usage survives his presidency.